This would make a good movie. It makes a decent comic, but definately would make a good movie.

The comic opens at a suburban birthday party in the 80s. The husband, for some as yet unknown reason, goes nuts and slaughters everyone including his wife and son, who’s birthday it was.

Cut to a couple weeks later and stressed out real estate agent, Richard Ashwalt, has been given the house to sell. And it’s not even cleaned yet. He’s been having a dry spell and his boss, who is a Bill Lumbergh look-alike, is leaning on him heavily. Richard and a co-worker go to the house on a friday night to get a look around.

Well there an old man named Jebediah Crone shows up and wants to buy the house immediately. Richard can’t do that, for fear of losing his license. On Monday his boss tells him a story about a “boogeyman” who buys up houses where people have died. Richard is also informed that he’s a person of interest in a murder case. A house he had sold to a couple, and the wife had called him a couple of times after the sale. The couple have been found dead.

To add to the weirdness, Crone shows up at Richards house. And Richard had never told him where he lived.

The stage is definately set for a creepy ride. Between the creepiness of Crone, Richard’s nightmares and the murder he’s connected to, it all adds up to an interesting horror story. I’m curious as to where this will all go.

Like I said at the beginning, I think this would have made a better movie then a comic book. There’s just more you can do in a movie to set the tone then you can in a comic. It’s not a bad comic by any means, but a movie would definately have set the tone alot better.

As a comic it moves along at a good pace. It flows and reads smoothly. The characters are interesting. We get a good feel for what Richard’s life is like and get an idea of the stress he’s under. We get a good feel for Crone’s creepiness without him doing too much.

The story is interesting, and for an issue where not much happens beyond the opening sequance, which is pretty gruesome but not overly so, there’s plenty to keep interest up. There’s enough teased to let us know that the “good” stuff is coming.

I’d never been a big fan of Cansino’s art, at least what I had seen before. Previous work had been too cartoony for my tastes. It’s hard to believe this is the same person.

The figures are well drawn, well proportioned. They do tend to look alike though, but there’s enough differences that can tell them apart, most of the time. There are a few scenes where its hard to tell who is who, and the lettering doesn’t help.

The layouts are good, the scenes flow smoothly with no noticeable jumps. I like the way Radical colors it’s books, most of them anyways, giving them a painted feel but without being painted art. For a book that takes place in the 80s I really didn’t get an 80s vibe from it, except for the opening pages with the murder scene.

For a horror book, the gruesome factor was turned down. I wonder if the tone will be more psychological horror instead of gore. That would be fine with me, as I prefer the psychological over gore, but it didn’t have much of that kind of tone yet.

For a first issue, this did it’s job, but leaves more for the upcoming issues to introduce then a normal first issue does.